LITERARY FASHIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23796, 1 May 1939, Page 15

LITERARY FASHIONS

Fashions in English literatureserious fashions, fashions that count —seem to change nowadays about once in every 25 years or so, perhaps a little more, perhaps 30, writes Mr Milaire Belloc. They seem to change roughly with the generations. The style, general manner or subject of a particular writer is beyond compare in the eyes of young men who have just turned their twentieth year. He is still admired probably, though with less security, by the same young men when they become fossilised at 50. But meanwhile a new set of young men have cropped up for whom the admired thing or man has suffered a reaction, often violent. The idol has become ridiculous, and there follows a corresponding period during which new idols reign and the old idol is a figure of fun. If one lives long enough one sees before dying yet another phase. The old idol is reinstated—not indeed as an idol (his worship is not admitted), but as a very respectable and permanent piece of classical work. Something more living than a mere museum piece. Something solid, of permanent value and still alive. My contemporaries have seen this happen in one major instance of Alfred Tennyson.